From the Nashville Scene: Tennessee posts encouraging results on a national education test, but still has a long way to go A version of a story I wrote for Tennessee Education Report on the recently released NAEP results and what they mean (and don’t mean) for Tennessee.

“I’ve been in Tennessee 13 years, and I’ve not seen a situation like in Knox County,” says Andy Spears, a Nashville policy consultant who also blogs about education in the state. “If I were in the administration, I would be concerned.” Read more

First, it seems fairly obvious that in devising new pay plans for teachers, teachers ought to be consulted about what would work for them. What is it they are looking for in a pay plan? But, many states (like Tennessee and North Carolina, for example) proceed without getting input from the teachers who are impacted […]

I’ve written recently over at Kentucky Education Report about Kentucky’s Common Core experience. First, I wrote about Gov. Steve Beshear and Commissioner Terry Holliday defending the Common Core from common attacks. More recently, I’ve written about the early implementation experience in Kentucky. While there have certainly been some bumps in the road, Kentucky is further along […]

Education historian and author Diane Ravitch cited an article I wrote for Tennessee Education Report on the lack of evidence that value-added data helps improve education outcomes. I’ve written on this topic several times, including noting the shortcomings of value-added data and the inability of value-added data to effectively differentiate among teachers. For more on education […]

A version of this post first appeared in Tennessee Education Report. Valerie Strauss has an interesting piece over at the Washington Post dealing with Value-Added Modeling. More specifically, the post analyzes what can be learned from 20 years of the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) implemented as a result of the Education Improvement Act — the […]

This post first appeared in Kentucky Education Report Lots of attention in the discussion around teacher quality focuses on value-added data and the ability to determine a teacher’s effectiveness from a single test score. More recently, a study by researchers at Harvard has received lots of attention because it purports to indicate that replacing […]

This article first appeared in Tennessee Education Report I’ve written before about the importance of fixing Tennessee’s school funding formula (the BEP) and doing so by fully-funding BEP 2.0. But, what is BEP 2.0? And what would it mean if fully-funded? Well, here’s Governor Bredesen’s 2007 speech outlining the BEP 2.0 changes (developed with then […]

A lot of the talk in education reform focuses on teacher quality as the key factor to influence in order to impact student achievement. While teacher quality is important, and other school-based factors also play a role, it is also important to realize that 50% of the factors that determine whether or not a child […]